The Cooper Medical School of Rowan University MD program

Phase 1 joins science and clinical practice from the start: clinical faculty teach with basic science educators, and the courses are multidisciplinary. In Cardiovascular, for example, you study the normal anatomy, histology, physiology and biochemistry of the heart and vessels, then their diseases in children and adults through cases, with imaging, tests and drug treatment. Infections and specific cancers, first met in year 1, come back inside each later organ-system course.

Longitudinal courses run alongside. Foundations of Medical Practice, the doctoring course, meets twice a week throughout Phase 1 and covers communication, ethics, professionalism, teaching and clinical practice through lectures, small groups and sessions with standardized patients. Medical Literature Interpretation, formerly called Scholar's Workshop, runs all four years. In year 1 it teaches you to read research, including biostatistics and study design, and from year 3 you build a capstone project with a faculty mentor.

Some subjects are threads rather than courses. The school counts 40 or more hours of nutrition teaching across courses and clerkships. In 2026 it also described climate and environmental health, from heat-related illness to environmental justice, as part of the core curriculum in every year.

In Phase 2 the teaching moves onto the wards and into clinics. Each clerkship gives its own lectures within the block, inpatient teaching rounds include imaging and pathology, and preceptors (the clinicians who supervise you) and clerkship directors give you regular feedback.

The school's 2026 overview for students includes a sample Phase 1 week. Days start at 8:00. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday you begin with a two-hour active learning group, then two lectures; on Tuesday and Thursday you start with Foundations of Medical Practice. Tuesday's late morning is Medical Literature Interpretation, and Thursday's is service learning.

Lunch is at noon. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have a two-hour practical session from 1:00, while Thursday and Friday afternoons are mostly self-directed learning, with a Selective as the Friday option. From Monday to Thursday the 3:00 to 5:00 slot is either your Ambulatory Clerkship shift at the clinic or self-directed study, and a formative quiz goes online on Friday.

Anatomy content runs through the organ-system courses. In year 2, for example, Cardiovascular and Pulmonary start from the normal anatomy, histology and physiology of each system, and Uro-Renal and Introduction to Ob-Gyn build on the anatomy you met in year 1.

Gross anatomy, the study of body structures visible to the naked eye, comes into focus in Skin and Musculoskeletal Systems, the last course of year 1, which runs from April into early June. Its course description says it introduces gross anatomy and anatomic dissection, and you begin instruction in the gross anatomy laboratory during it. Once you begin anatomy you get a locker next to the lab.

Your first patients are at the Cooper Rowan Clinic, which the school says you join in the third week. On the 2026-27 calendar, the Ambulatory Clerkship, your clinic course, began on August 10, the week after orientation. The clinic is free, organized and staffed by students, and serves uninsured and underinsured adults Monday to Thursday from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. At least one faculty physician and one pharmacist are on site, and pharmacy students from Saint Joseph's University work on the teams.

Students act as primary care providers for about 600 patients a year. Your role grows each year: first-year students take the history and second-years do the physical examination. Third-years fill any gaps, report to the faculty physician and lead the team's discussion of diagnosis and treatment. You also coordinate your patients' care, going with them to hospital visits and specialist appointments.

In October of year 1, Week on the Wards 1 takes you onto hospital services, where small groups see how inpatient teams work and talk with third- and fourth-year students, residents and faculty. Full-time clinical work starts in late June after year 2. In year 3 you admit patients to the hospital and follow them through their stay. You also log every patient encounter and procedure, and the Office of Medical Education reviews the log at the end of each block.

Formative assessments give you feedback without high stakes; summative ones are the exams and evaluations that make up a large share of your grade in most courses. Each Phase 1 course has weekly formative quizzes. Summative assessments include written and practical exams, objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), capstone work, clinical assessments, presentations, and team-based learning and active learning group assessments.

Foundations of Medical Practice has its own small OSCEs, and you sit a formative OSCE at the midpoint of years 1, 2 and 3. Year 3 ends with a summative OSCE and an ultrasound OSCE, and year 4 includes an oral exam on resuscitation and critical care basics.

In year 3 you sit subject exams, often called shelf exams: national exams in each clinical subject from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), which also co-sponsors the USMLE. A formative one comes at the midpoint of each block and the graded one at the end. Inpatient clerkship grades combine your preceptors' assessment, your subject exam score and tasks such as a written note. Psychiatry and Neurology are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Unsatisfactory, and the two-week Anesthesiology and Community Medicine rotations Pass or Unsatisfactory.

Step 1 tests whether you understand and can apply the sciences basic to medicine, and it has been reported only as pass or fail for exams taken on or after January 26, 2022. Step 2 CK tests how you apply clinical knowledge to patient care. Students in LCME-accredited MD programs are eligible to sit both. At CMSRU you sit Step 1 at the end of year 2 and must take it by about June 20 to start year 3.

The school encourages you to take Step 2 CK as soon as possible after year 3. Its 2025-26 calendar required students starting year 4 that summer to schedule and sit it by August 1.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. Its June 2026 announcement had named 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would sit Step 1 in late spring 2029, a few months after the switch, and Step 2 CK in summer 2030.

• These dates are projections from the school's 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars. The USMLE program says it is still working out how applying for and scheduling exams will work under the new model.
• The school's PC3 pages list passing Step 1 and Step 2 CK before graduating among the standards required of all students.
• The 2025-26 calendar also set three clinical science self-assessments across year 3 to help with Step 2 CK preparation.
• The 2026-27 calendar sets aside remediation periods, time to make up work you have not passed: June 7-30, 2027 for first-years and May 3-14 for fourth-years. Second-years have May 10 to June 4, the same weeks as the Step 1 review course. A fourth-year still in remediation can take part in Commencement but receives the diploma later.
• The Chiron Honor Society inducts the top 25% of each rising fourth-year class on academic performance in years 1 to 3. Its formula weights Phase 1 course performance at 60%, and the year 3 subject exam average, preceptor assessments and clerkship grades at 13.33% each.
• The LCME gave the program full accreditation in June 2016 and re-accredited it for the maximum eight years in November 2021.

Teaching is based in Camden. Classes are in the Medical Education Building at Broadway and Benson Streets, and simulation is one block away in the Joint Health Sciences Center. The core clinical campus is Cooper Norcross University Hospital, the 663-bed flagship of Cooper Norcross Health, which houses a Level I trauma center and the Children's Hospital at Cooper Norcross Health.

Cooper's names changed in 2026. Its board voted on July 27 to rename Cooper University Health Care, and the new name, Cooper Norcross Health, went public on September 23. Cooper University Hospital is now Cooper Norcross University Hospital, though many school pages still use the old names. The health system's physicians serve as the school's faculty.

At the start of year 3 the class is divided into cohorts, and the school notes that assignments vary. The emergency medicine clerkship is in Cooper's emergency department, and the two-week Community Medicine clerkship is with Inspira Health. The school says you will need access to a car to reach some affiliated clinical sites in year 3.

The school does not provide student housing; the Office of Student Affairs advises on housing, roommates and relocation. A 24-hour parking garage is available for an annual fee.

You take two medical humanities Selectives from the Edward D. Viner Center for Humanism: one in the spring of year 1 and one in the fall of year 2. Each meets six times over a semester, mostly on Friday afternoons. Options range from Medical Spanish, Applied Medical Ethics and Racism in Medicine to Murals and Geographies of Camden, where you explore public art within a 20-minute walk of campus, and Medical Sculpting.

Year 3 has four one-week electives across specialties and subspecialties, a chance to sample fields before you plan year 4. The optional Healer's Art, five evening sessions in the fall on the 2026-27 calendar, builds a supportive community of students and physicians around grief, awe in medicine and service.

Year 4 needs 16 weeks of electives, and up to 12 can be away rotations, also called visiting rotations, at other medical schools. Most schools take applications through the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) Visiting Student Learning Opportunities service, which you can use before year 4 starts. For the rest you contact the school directly, helped by the registrar and the M4 staff.

At CMSRU, electives can be clinical, such as cardiology or gastroenterology, or non-clinical, such as healthcare administration and informatics. Global health options named in a 2024 concentration document include two weeks with Floating Doctors in Panama, fistula care in Rwanda and a longitudinal urogynecology program in the Dominican Republic.

PC3, launched in 2016, is for students planning careers in family medicine, primary care internal medicine or primary care pediatrics. From 2026 it takes up to eight a year: two each in family medicine and pediatrics, and four in internal medicine, two of them on an Inspira pathway rather than Cooper's. You apply once accepted to CMSRU. If a place opens during year 1, you can apply then and join at the end of the year after an interview, but not in year 2.

PC3 starts in late June, six weeks before orientation, with a five-week Introduction to Basic Clinical Skills and a one-week Clinical Practice Course (June 22 to July 31 on the 2026-27 calendar). From year 1 you spend a half-day a month at a Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) clinic in Camden. After year 1 you take a five-week course, Transforming Healthcare in an Urban Environment; late joiners then take a two-week clinical course, Intensive PCMH and Primary Care Exposure. You sit Step 1 with your class.

Year 3 is redesigned: four-week clerkship blocks with study weeks, then the 11-week Cooper Longitudinal Outpatient Clerkship (CLOC), a half-day a week with attending physicians in each of six specialties. You take Step 2 CK by March 1, can match that March and finish with a four-week sub-internship. The pathway depends on meeting the school's standards, and the school warns that applying elsewhere is hard. You can rejoin the four-year track until January 1 of year 3.

The MD/PhD is a physician-engineer program with Rowan's Department of Biomedical Engineering, and you must be admitted to both programs. In the 2020 program document, one track starts with two years of medical school, then three years of PhD coursework and research, then years 3 and 4 of the MD. That makes seven years in all, and your research can serve as your capstone.

The MD/MBA with the William G. Rohrer College of Business takes five years: after Phase 1 and a Step 1 pass, you spend about nine months on the MBA, between years 2 and 3 or years 3 and 4. PC3 students who want another degree must switch to the four-year track. Some students reach CMSRU through BS-MD agreements with Rowan and with Saint Joseph's University.

Scholarly Concentrations are optional, open to students in good academic standing with their advisor's endorsement, and add about 80 to 100 hours of work. Each combines set courses, a capstone in the field and extra work, and appears on your transcript and MSPE, the dean's letter for residency applications. Nine are listed: Biomedical Ethics, Medical Education, Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship, JEDAI (justice, equity, diversity, anti-racism and advocacy, and inclusion), and Medical Humanities and Narrative Medicine. The other four are Climate Health, Leadership, Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, and Global Health.

• Most concentrations take two to six students per class.
• The school's research page, which cites 2022 figures, describes a Student Summer Research Program and a Camden Scholars' Forum poster competition each spring. Outside grants can fund 8 to 12 summer weeks or a full research year.

The six-story Medical Education Building opened in July 2012. It has a 250-seat auditorium, a 120-seat multipurpose room, anatomy labs and 25 active learning rooms. Each of these seats 10 to 12 and is the home base of one active learning group for years 1 and 2, and you can study there when no class is scheduled.

The first floor holds the Learning Commons for study and group work. On the fourth floor are a wellness center with exercise and cardio rooms, showers and a meditation room, and a student lounge. At the hospital, third- and fourth-year students get a locker in Cooper's Dorrance Building and can use a medical student lounge with computers, a printer and a coffee bar.

The Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, run jointly with Cooper, fills over 12,000 square feet of the Joint Health Sciences Center, which opened in 2019. It has 12 OSCE and examination rooms, and five high-fidelity rooms set up as a surgical suite, a birthing suite, a pediatric room and two inpatient rooms. The American Society of Anesthesiologists has accredited it as an Endorsed Simulation Program since 2009.

Learning communities divide a class into groups that share advisors and activities. CMSRU's are four Advisory Colleges, named after Elizabeth Blackwell, Harvey Cushing, Benjamin Rush and William Osler, and you find out which is yours at a sorting ceremony during orientation week. Each college has its own faculty advisors, including a senior director, holds regular meetings and competes through the year for the Advisory College Cup.

At the ceremony you are also paired with a primary career and academic advisor, who guides your progress, career choices and wellness for all four years. You also get a peer advisory liaison, a second-year student in your college. Pre-clinical advisors help with specialty choices and research in years 1 and 2, and specialty mentors take over in years 3 and 4. The Office of Learning Support offers study-skills assessment, peer tutoring, one-on-one meetings, test-taking and time-management help, and USMLE Step preparation.

Student Support Services has two master's-level clinicians on site, meets every incoming student individually, and holds accountability meetings with learning specialists in each course. Confidential counseling, with 24-hour crisis support, comes through Rutgers University Behavioral Health Services' Student Wellness Program, with teletherapy through Uwill and psychiatric care through Cooper. Under LCME rules, anyone who treats you takes no part in assessing or promoting you.